trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

Hafkamp (2002), working from the economics of conventions, also detailed two such transitions atthe European level (based on case studies from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Greece).The first, from the ‘old’ regime based on the protection of public health, from the mid 19 th century to theend of the 1960s, and the second, an emerging ‘new’ regime based on prevention and closed materialcycles, from the early 1970 to the end of the 1990s.These authors note that European waste management may be on the cusp of a new transition,indicated by events that have occurred during the late 1990s/early 2000s. For instance, less formalinvolvement by governments at the national level (Parto et al. 2007), friction between member stateregimes (Hafkamp 2002) and the changing perception of waste.3.2. Changes in institutions/conventions responsible for change in wastemanagement regimesBoth transition theory and the economics of conventions look to explain regime change through thechange in the existing structure of rule/institutions/conventions which guide individual and collectiveaction. Parto et al (2007) use institutions (behavioural, cognitive, associative, regulative andconstitutive) to understand a series of innovations in the Dutch waste system. Hafkamp (2002)identified several conventional principles of the ‘old’ waste management regime, namely: “themunicipality collects the waste; disposal without risk to public health; costs borne by households andbusinesses (user pays); household and business obligated to participate; and the municipalityobligated to receive all waste supplied for disposal” (Hafkamp 2002:12). The ‘new’ regime involved ashift of conventional principles in the waste management regime. The conventional principles at theheart of this regime include: the prevention principle, precautionary principle, polluter pays principle(extended producer responsibility), free trade principle, principle of subsidiarity, proximity principle,and the valorisation principle (operationalised as the waste hierarchy) (Buclet et al. 2002), see Figure 1.Whilst these principles are common at the European level, it is their institutional articulation intopolitical objectives which leads to the variation of technological trajectories of national wastemanagement regimes.218